Together they led Merle, unresisting now, to the runabout. Dick got in beside her, and took the wheel.
"They will be here very soon now," he said to Tia Teresa. "Mr. Munson will give you all the help you require. I'll look after Merle." He backed the machine, turned, and the little red light swept up the roadway into the distance. From across the valley the headlights of a big automobile were now glaring like flashing suns in the soft moonlight.
It was the hands of Tia Teresa that separated the bodies. That of Ben Thurston she flung from her as if it had been carrion for the buzzards and coyotes. Then she knelt down and stroked with loving hand the brow of Don Manuel. On the dead face was a look of ineffable calm.
"Manuel, my Manuel, the little child I nursed! My beautiful, brave Manuel!"
Thus lamenting, she awaited the coming of Munson and his friends.
|A FULL year had passed, and the good people of Tejon had at last ceased to speak daily about Dick Willoughby's exciting adventures, Ben Thurston's inglorious death, and the romantic and now indubitable ending of the famous outlaw, Don Manuel.
Both the victims of the desperate fight on Comanche Point had been laid to rest--Don Manuel, in the little Mission churchyard above the hill, side by side with the beloved sister of his youthful days, whose betrayal and death he had at last avenged, although at the cost of his own life; Ben Thurston, in the modern cemetery beside his son, the poor weak youth in whom the once sturdy family of pioneers had sunk to final decadency. Pierre Luzon, the brave and chivalrous old Frenchman, slept near the grave of the chief he had served so loyally, and, according to the old-time bandit code of ethics, so nobly and so well. In the God's acres where all feuds pass to oblivion there was perfect peace.
Sing Ling had unobtrusively departed for China, a wealthy man, as the bank manager at Bakersfield could have told, no doubt destined to become a leading magnate in the Flowery Land. Guadalupe was never seen again; the aged squaw had probably died in her secret cave. The white wolf, too, had perished; a cowboy riding the range had been attracted by some buzzards flying and circling round and round far up on the mountain side, and on making his way to the indicated spot, had found the animal's carcass picked almost to the bones. The old days were forever gone.